TV or Online? Japan’s Leaders Debate on How To Host Debate

While the head of Japan’s main opposition party has stirred the markets with his recent calls for aggressive monetary easing, he has also sparked a different kind of debate on the role of social media in national politics, by challenging the nation’s prime minister to an online face-off before next month’s general election.

Over the weekend, Liberal Democratic Party chief Shinzo Abe called for a one-on-one debate with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on online video-streaming service Nico Nico Douga, stressing that hosting the debate on the Internet would be “interactive and open to the world.”